Hmm. I think I'll sit this one out. Had some comments. I'll keep them to myself and let others determine the direction of the thread. Standing by.

sounds good!!. next time i have a million to spend, i'll be picking one up for sure

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Tideland Prius @ Nov 14 2007, 06:20 PM) [snapback]539649[/snapback]</div>

Did you happen to see any tanker trucks, with the tank painted red? That would be the hydrogen supply for the FCHV .

What's the gas tank like on these things? Is it just this enormous gas tank? Or does a hydrogen fuel cell get a tremendous efficiency boost as a result of the way a fuel cell works in an "electric"(?) car?

Achieving 300 miles per tank is a significant breakthrough. There's no belittling that. Now all they have to do is get the price from ten million dollars down to a few tens of thousands and create a nation-wide distribution and retail network for the hydrogen.

I have a (toy) fuel-cell car. It really works. The fuel cell is worth about a hundred dollars and has a fraction of the power output of a D cell battery. Maybe ten or twenty thousand fuel cells like this could drive a car. That's one or two million dollars just for the fuel cells.

And from what I hear, fuel cells have a relatively limited life.

And then there was the EV-1, which worked just fine, a decade ago, until GM decided to grab them all back against the owners' wishes and crush them.

Unless there's a pipeline to the sun I haven't heard about, why does everyone ignore the fact that the energy to source the H2 will come PREDOMINANTLY from fossil fuels?

It would be really nice if a Electric version and a FCHV Version of ANYTHING were available. I know which one I would get. It's just frustrating watching the birth of the next dinosaur.

..

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(naterprius @ Nov 22 2007, 12:37 AM) [snapback]542806[/snapback]</div>

Get Cranking!

I'm not kidding

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 18 2007, 08:11 PM) [snapback]541327[/snapback]</div>

Honda will begin leasing their Clarity FCX fuel cell sedan in 2008 for $600 a month, which includes maintanence and collision insurance. As far a fuel goes, you will be able to get that from their "Home Energy Station" which converts natural gas into hydrogen right next to your driveway.

Honda's Home Hydrogen Fueling Station

In the future Hydrogen will be derived in an electrical process with the electricity generated by Nuclear power.

There are other ways to get hydrogen without burning fossil fuels.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Winston @ Nov 28 2007, 12:33 PM) [snapback]545364[/snapback]</div>

The only way to produce enough energy through nuclear power to meet our transportation needs will be by using breeder reactors. Breeder reactors use the same technology as is used to produce the fissile materials for nuclear weapons. Thus proliferating breeder reactors will create an extreme risk that more and more countries will obtain the technology to produce nuclear weapons.

Not to mention the radioactive waste, which will be deadly for longer than the human race has existed.

This is certainly a way to meet our energy needs, but pretty much dooms the planet to another mass extinction in the relatively near future.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Winston @ Nov 28 2007, 03:33 PM) [snapback]545364[/snapback]</div>

Remember, every time you do a conversion of one energy to another (electricity to hydrogen), there's conversion loss involved.

Why not just use electricity from the start is beyond me.

It is mind boggling to see the following Energy Distribution System:

1) Sun delivers energy to doorstep that.......
2) Solar panel "doorstep" converts to electricity that.....
3) Can be shipped around with an infrastructure mostly completed that......
3) Can be used directly.

being slow rolled compared to:

1) Some finite liquid, gas, or solid fuel that must be burned to.....
2) Generate Hydrogen, that must be......
3) Shipped around all over the place with a non-existent infrastructure to be delivered to.....
4) Very expensive fuel cells......
5) That generate electricity.


Somewhere deep in my childhood, I remember a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode on squirrel powered cars. I wonder why this comes to mind?

the reason we convert is supposedly, one day, on the horizon, just around the corner, coming up next, hydrogen will be a way to store more energy than can be currently stored in a battery....

guess they forgot to figure the march of technology which should have us with 10 times the storage technology for batteries by the time fuel cells get into the 5 figure range...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Nov 28 2007, 06:56 PM) [snapback]545522[/snapback]</div>

It's a simple diversion tactic: They have managed to convince people that H2 is "abundant" even though what is abundant is H2O, which contains no energy. Then, they've managed to conceal the astronomical costs of fuel cells. And by this means they've diverted public interest away from electric cars.

I run into many people who appear to be of average intelligence, but who are scientifically illiterate, who actually believe that the "abundance" of hydrogen means that they can just harvest it for little or no cost. Once, when I explained to a woman that hydrogen is a carrier, not a primary source of energy, she acted like I was the crackpot.

Can anybody wonder why, in another thread, I said that Americans are idiots???